Hello,

The first programs I ever wrote was for chip8.  Way back when.  But at the time, I never got to run them.  I had wanted to get the DREAM 6800 kit computer - but it was out of reach at the time - but it didn't stop me writing code on paper.  I guess one advantage of that was that i found no bugs in my code!

So when I started exploring retro computer hardware/kits last year (pandemic, lock down and all) - I remember those days and then found the octo project.  I really love that chip8 has a strong and vibrant community of developers, keeping true to the original vision.  The games developed here are really cool.

It inspired me to write my own interpreter for my retro computer kit - a RC2014 - a z80 based system.  Initially I paired it with a graphics chip from the early 80s - TMS9918 (used in the first MSX computers and Texas Instruments' TI-99/4 and many others).

But due to the difference in the way the TMS9918 chip handles graphics (its pattern based not bitmap) - i was only able to get black/white 64/32 mode to work - i wanted to run some of the cool little octo games on my kit --- so I designed a new graphics board, based on the much more powerful graphics chip (V9958) - a chip from the mid to late 80s.

So far I have got most of the instructions implemented - still need to work through some of the extended instructions (scrolling etc).

Been able to get Super neatboy and a few others to run.

Just wanted to share and to say thanks for keeping chip8 alive.  

I did the graphics board - the rest of the kit is a RC2014 -- and open retro computing kit system - https://rc2014.co.uk/

Cheers

Dean

That kicks ass! Great work.

Really cool stuff, Dean- thanks for sharing!

Do you plan to open-source your chip8 interpreter? I didn't see any mention of it on the Hackaday project page.

Yes its was open sourced from the start - sorry just forgot to include the link:

https://github.com/vipoo/rc2014-chip8

At the moment this code only works on a RC2014 kit - but i plan to port it to MSX configuration - so it should be able to be run on MSX emulators and real MSX hardware in the future.

I am currently trying to get Chicken Scratch to run - it requires all the scrolling instructions.

The scrolling proving to be bit of a challenge.  When scrolling  an individual colour plane, I had to do this in software  - which is quite slow.  But when scrolling on plane 3 - i can unleash the full power of the hardware acceleration available from the 1980s!